Ritually Speaking article

[Kzach]

I definitely like the concept. You could easily wrap a whole adventure around this idea. Not only the finding of the item itself, but of the ritual as well. And gear it up to a final showdown with something where the ritual has to be finished in the midst of combat.

Reminds me a lot of Buffy episodes with Willow or Giles and gang doing the ritual whilst Buffy and beef-cake beat on the enemies

 

[fuzzlewump]

The concept is double-awesome.

Every magical item in 4E, should have at least one ritual of this kind. Artifacts should have a page or two full of them. It would be nice to have some be more broad for now, as in apply to more than one weapon. Something like a storm based ritual that can have the focus of any magical item that have crit dice that deal thunder or lightning damage. Etc, etc, for every element. Vicious and supremely vicious could share.

 

[Kzach]

I just thought of something...

Kzach holds aloft his magical sword and says:

BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL! I. HAVE. THE POWER!

 

[Hadrian the Builder]

It seems to me that these rituals get closer to what magic items SHOULD be in the game.

 

[chitzk0i]

I don't have DDI so the article is blocked... and I'm not asking for a complete rundown, but do you have more examples? I like the concept a lot. So far I've given out about 10 magic items in my campaign, and all but two of them have been created by me to give them more wonder (I've tried not to make them more powerful, just more odd or adaptable).

The ritual for the staff of winter lets you change the weather within a 2-mile radius into a blizzard for an amount of time indicated by your arcana check. The ritual for mantle of the seventh wind lets you grant your allies overland flight for a time. None of the rituals have a component cost.

 

[Saeviomagy]

This is why I hate DDI.

If there were less redundant classes and more of this sort of thing in PHBIII, I'd be buying it.

 

[Piratecat]

This is why I hate DDI.

If there were less redundant classes and more of this sort of thing in PHBIII, I'd be buying it.

I'm not sure I understand. That's like hating Paizo's Dragon Magazine because you didn't have a subscription when a cool article came around, isn't it?

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'm not sure I understand. That's like hating Paizo's Dragon Magazine because you didn't have a subscription when a cool article came around, isn't it?

Paizo was a seperate company to wizards. Things that were presented in Dragon could easily be presented in a different manner in official WOTC publications.

However with the current situation, if it shows up in DDI, that's it. It's done. It's not going to show up in an official book after that, and nor are any alternative rules for the same thing. I mean there's a slim chance that the dragon compendium (or annual, or whatever) will have the rules in print, but given the last one's dire content I hold little hope.

And so, I'll be stuck with PDF. Meanwhile the glossy hardcover treatment is given to material that I'm thoroughly uninterested in (with the exception of the seeker and skill powers).

This is mainly a problem with the "everything is core" philosophy. Why would you publish a set of rules that fill the same rule space as something that's already core?

 

[Piratecat]

Ah, thank you for explaining. That's not something I see as a problem for me, but I understand your point.

 

[N0Man]

Paizo was a seperate company to wizards. Things that were presented in Dragon could easily be presented in a different manner in official WOTC publications.

However with the current situation, if it shows up in DDI, that's it. It's done. It's not going to show up in an official book after that, and nor are any alternative rules for the same thing. I mean there's a slim chance that the dragon compendium (or annual, or whatever) will have the rules in print, but given the last one's dire content I hold little hope.

And so, I'll be stuck with PDF. Meanwhile the glossy hardcover treatment is given to material that I'm thoroughly uninterested in (with the exception of the seeker and skill powers).

This is mainly a problem with the "everything is core" philosophy. Why would you publish a set of rules that fill the same rule space as something that's already core?

Except it's not entirely true. There's a chance it might show up in a Dragon Annual, and there have been some article content taken from the DDI magazines and placed in actual books, such as into the DMG2 (off the top of my head).

It's not all inclusive, but not everything is a dead-end. My only gripe about so much being digital is that I'm still not happy with e-reader technology and electronic distribution models presented so far, but I still I still love the articles, the character creator, and the Compendium.